Senator questions $2m NIH grant to disgraced psychiatric researcher

The US senator Charles Grassley has called on the National Institutes of Health to justify its decision to award a five year $2m (£1.3m; €1.6m) grant to the prominent but disgraced psychiatric researcher Charles Nemeroff, “despite past ethical problems.”

“It is troubling that NIH continues to provide limited federal dollars to individuals who have previously had grant funding suspended for failure to disclose conflicts of interest,” Grassley wrote in a 29 May letter to the director of the NIH, Francis Collins.

He asked Collins to provide full documentation of communications concerning Nemeroff and the grant within two weeks. Grassley also asked who participated in the peer …